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May the Best Algorithm Win…

With $3 Million Prize, Health Insurer Raises Stakes on the Data-Crunching Circuit

By

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries

Updated March 16, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

Amid a larger effort to use medical data to improve health care, one company is trying something new: offering $3 million in prize money for the algorithm that can best predict when people are likely to be sent to the hospital.

The algorithm contest, the largest of its kind so far, is part of a trend toward using such prizes to help find the best answers to complicated data-analysis questions.